Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – With more than 50 career starts players don’t get much more experienced than City High senior Maclayne Menzel.

Four years of field time has helped Menzel develop a keen knack for being in the right spot at the right time.

“She is always in the right position,” City High coach Corbin Scholz said. “And she has really good vision of the field.”

As she often has through the course of her career Menzel found herself in the right spot often on Friday and the result was the second three-goal effort of the season for the starting center back.

Menzel scored all three of her goals in the second half as Class 3A ninth-ranked City High (4-1) raced past 2A No. 11 Liberty High 4-0 in a cross-town Mississippi Valley Conference match at City High.

“Movement was one of the big things and just energy up top,” Menzel said. “When we had more numbers up there it really helped.”

After scoring three goals in 30 matches in her first two varsity seasons Menzel had a career-high eight goals last season from her center back spot.

She had three in a 10-0 win over Cedar Rapids Jefferson last week and tacked on three more on Friday as City High won its third straight game.

“Maclayne is a starting center back for us and she is just such a versatile player and we find moments to push her up in games that we need her,” Scholz said. “She is always just helped us dominate.”

Menzel was at the center for some second-half domination by the Little Hawks on Friday.

The senior snapped a scoreless tie less than eight minutes into the second half when she took a pass from senior Mia Larson and tapped in a shot from in front of the goal.

“We kept playing the outside balls and Mia (Larson) had great hustle and she got there first,” Menzel said. “I happen to just tap it in but it was all (Mia) it was her hustle.”

Menzel made it 2-0 when she scored her second goal of the match with 15:15 remaining.

The second goal by Menzel started a flurry that saw City High score three goals in a little more than eight minutes to put the match out of reach.

“We had to focus on the positive things we were doing in the first half and then we moved on to the things that we needed to work on,” City High senior Ava Bell said. “We had better first touches, we had more chances and we talked about how we had opportunities we just weren’t finishing them and we had to play smarter and play faster.”

Sophomore Evelynn Parlet made it 3-0 City High when she scored off a Menzel feed with 10:55 remaining.

“It was just a good pass from Maclayne,” Parlet said. “All I had to do was run and put it into the goal.”

Fittingly it was Menzel that capped the scoring.

She knocked in a perfectly placed corner kick by senior Kelsey Dilanni with 7:25 remaining to give City High a 4-0 cushion.

“It was mainly Kelsey’s placement, it was a great ball,” Menzel said. “I was basically just standing in the goal. I just had to get the right angle.”

The loss snapped a two-game winning streak for Liberty High (4-2) over ranked opponents.

The Lightning had outscored 5A No. 14 Dubuque Hempstead and 2A ninth-ranked Central DeWitt by a combined score of 4-1 in consecutive victories.

City High has outscored opponents 16-0 with a pair of wins over ranked teams since its only loss to third-ranked Pleasant Valley on April 6.

“We moved the ball through the back a lot and I felt like our control and our touches were way better than previous games,” Bell said. “We handled the ball really well under pressure.”

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